Nearing 4 weeks in Copenhagen

The weather has turned quite cold, here (down to -8 and -10C during the day). Homeless people dying in Poland and Ukraine, and Heathrow canceled a ton of flights last Sunday. It snowed Sunday and Monday. Here's the view out my office window (from Monday):

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

I did go do something touristy last Sunday, but it was a bit hampered by the cold. Turns out, -8C and windy is not good weather to go explore something that's sort of mainly outdoors/something to look at. Christiania. Interesting place. The ''Green Light District'' was some incredibly blatant/straightforward, calm...well. Selling of wares that would be illegal other places besides Amsterdam. No picture-taking allowed, so I can only tell you that it was interesting, and that the internet has sufficiently many pictures to entertain. This was next to where I entered.

So, rather than continue on about touristy things, I'll tell you about odds and ends of living abroad/in Copenhagen.

1. Immigration:  On the surface, it seems like Denmark is better to its immigrants than Germany. There are free Danish classes for foreigners, e.g.  Everyone speaks English, which makes it easy/not stressful at all to order food or buy groceries or anything like that.  What I was told is that Denmark likes its foreign visitors, who are guaranteed to leave after a limited time. To actually immigrate, however, there's some weird points system for becoming a citizen. Lots of points for going to an Ivy League school or a Scandinavian school, etc. They also don't like allowing in spouses of Danish citizens when the spouse is less than 28. Supposedly to block arranged marriages (is this an oblique reference to Islam? I don't know). My impression is that Germany likes to pretend that it has no foreigners. 


2. Currency: All kroner (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) are seriously devalued. 5 Danish kroner per USD, but it costs 50 Danish kroner (crowns) for a half liter of beer, 100 dkk (Danish crowns) for a winter hat, 300-1500 dkk for shoes, etc. That is, the buying power is not reflected by the ratio to USD or euro. As a result, the lower level coins have been disappearing. There are no coins for anything less than half a crown. I saw a sign by a train station advertising the halting of use of the .25 dkk coins (or, that's the gist I got; it was in Danish).
   
   The result?  Rounding. Their stores have the same deceptive prices as in the states (albeit, they all include tax). E.g. Yogurt for 13,95 dkk.  So, what happens if your bill totals to something like xxx.65 dkk?  Or xxxx.14 dkk? Rounding, up and down, to the nearest coin in use. It makes sense. And would also never fly in Germany. Makes me think of how nice it would be to not have pennies. :)



From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)



3. Bikes: It is pretty exhilarating to be in a town with bike traffic. Bike traffic lights, bike lanes, and cyclists that signal turns and stops (which they have to, otherwise there would be accidents, an no one wears a helmet). It's definitely more fun than normal traffic, and I haven't seen any traffic jams.


4. Bread: So far, not impressed by Danish bread. Much more pricey than what I expect of European bread (compared to Germany and France), and overall underwhelming. However, interesting side-note:  The import of the merchant Sephardic Jews to Denmark in the 1600s brought with them their baking habits, including covering their breads with poppy seeds. The hebrew word for these yielded the word in Danish, which is now commonly used to refer to (any) roll -- birkes.


5. Canada Goose coats: This is sort of random, but it seems like the next big thing in coats (at least here) is the brand Canada Goose. These suckers run about $600 USD (in the states) in my experience, and are Arctic-expedition levels of warm. I've seen at least 50 people here wearing them. I tend to see 5-10 people in them every time I walk around for any extended period of time. Not sure why, as we're not living in particularly arctic conditions. Maybe it's a status symbol. 


6. Recycling?: So, Germany recycles some crazy amount of their waste, 85% or such. Here? I have seen the occasional glass-recycling bin, and plastic bottle collectors at the grocery store, but overall, I'm told they don't recycle here, they incinerate, and use it to heat the place.


7. Heating: On the topic of heating -- all the buildings (so says the apartment rental guy) plug into the same central boiler system. I imagine there's some redundancy to protect against things going wrong, and to keep anyone trying to fix it from suffering 600C steam burns, but I find that pretty interesting.


8. Danish: About as crazy as English, with a worse number system. :) Here's some Danish that helps you get by:  
• Biograff = movie theater (don't ask me, I didn't do it) :) 
• Smørebrod = ''traditional Danish food''. Don't bother. Go find yourself some of the super-dense schwarzbrot in the store, cover it with mayoand a piece of breaded fish, voila. ;) 
• Tak = thanks
• Unskyld = Excuse me 
• Bøf = steak, oksekød = beef 
• Kylling = chicken 
• Skinke = ham, Swinekød = pork 
• kød = meat (said ~ ''cool'')
• dag = day (Said the same way, roughly).  Tirsdag, Ondag, Torsdag, Fredag, Lørdag, Sondag. Only weird one is the name for Saturday. It's comes from a word for washing/doing laundry. So, Saturday = laundry day. 

The worst part is that they have the same greetings as English. So, if someone says Hi/Hello/Hey, it does not mean that they will assume the conversation will continue in English instead of Danish. At least with German, I can hear the difference between ''Hallo'' and "Hello".

I was asked pretty recently if I miss anything from the states. Outside of the obvious (friends, affordable alcohol), yeah. Since I'm on a roll with lists, here's another:

1. Netflix. Man. I miss being able to just put something on, of my choice. Don't get me wrong, I've been pretty impressed so far with the frequency of decent movies on the Danish television, although it's hard to figure out what'll be playing as they translate most of the titles into Danish. E.g. tonight, they're showing ''Slothed og Fordom'', an ''Amerikanisk romantisk drama fra 2005''. Stumped? Here's a hint: it stars Keira Knightly and was written by Jane Austen. Also, there's the daily showing of ''Venner''(friends) and ''Greys hvide verden''(Greys Anatomy).


2. Cheap, good coffee. Even in Berlin, I could get an espresso for a euro. Here, I'm lucky to pay 4 USD. 20dkk (and that's a deal!).


3. Customer Service. Man. Something happened, my internet's out. There's no company for me to harass, so I have to wait for the apartment rental agency to harass them. However, they both keep limited hours (9-4pm, at best), which is shocking. that is, there is no one for me to call at 6pm or on the weekend to say ''Hey, my internet's out. Please fix it''. 


4. Craigslist. Not for now, but the future. It just doesn't exist over here. Why? What do people do with their old stuff? Burn it for fuel? 

I also kind of miss Americans. I find Scandinavians (and Germans) pretty reserved. I was talking to a guy about this, and he said the Netherlands are worse, that you wouldn't talk to someone unless you knew them since elementary school. Bleah.

On the practical front, I think I have a place to live for March, and theoretically, April onwards (well, I put down a deposit, so I ought to). I am resigned for now to pay out my teeth, especially as there is no Craigslist with which to cheaply furnish a place, so I would have to factor in the cost of furniture when thinking about renting, on top of the actual cost of rent/utilities (and probably also courtage/provisions/i.e. commission fees for the realtors).

The ''lakes'' (glorified moats/puddles or maybe dammed up canals) have frozen over. I walked by about sunset the other day (before the complete freeze) and took some pictures:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)

They have swans:

From Copenhagen 2012(picasa)